You Report, We Decide

BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR PHILADELPHIA WEEKLY New Jersey has hit a speed bump on the road to medical marijuana. The Christie administration has been asking for more time to implement the law and PW has learned that the bill’s chief sponsor, State Senator Nicholas Scutari, is going to give it to them. As you may recall, back in January New Jersey became the 14th state in the union to pass medical marijuana legislation. A last minute amendment to the legislation — part of a trade-off that made the law more restrictive in terms of who qualifies to receive medical marijuana and how much they were entitled to each month — moved up the timeline for implementation from one year to six months after it was signed into law. The law calls for the state health department to come up with a system of regulations by July 1st that would govern the production and distribution of medical marijuana. After a 60-day comment period, the state would then have until November to get the first six non-profit medical marijuana dispensaries open for business. However, the Christie administration has asked for an extension of nine to 12 months, hoping to push back the deadline as far as July 2011, to give Health Department Commissioner Dr. Poonam Alaigh more time to figure out how and where plants will be grown and sold, and by whom. MORE

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